Jason Hammond

Recent Posts

Brick and mortar businesses aren’t dead, but the landscape is changing. As more millennials and baby boomers move into urban neighborhoods, they are creating concentrated areas for retailers and service based-businesses like restaurants and boutique fitness studios, who are all vying for the same prime locations. These businesses know that location can either make or break your business. So how do they win the battle for these prime spots? One answer might be a lot more simple than you might think—The Pitch Presentation. We’ve had a great deal of success helping clients secure locations by developing a creative, thoughtful, story-driven pitches that help bring their vision to life and lend credibility to their concept. Here are 3 things we’ve learned over the years:

The consumer buying/shopping journey is being dramatically impacted by consumers ability to access real-time product information at any given moment. From product reviews and price comparisons at other retailers to research on your company's sourcing and other ethical practices, consumers are going online while standing in the aisle. These micro-moments make it more important than ever that brands have a consumer-friendly, content-focused approach to their online presence. As the recent Google Article on Mobile Shopping states, “It's less important for a shopper to be present in-store than for the store to be present wherever and whenever a shopper needs it.”

Over-the-top networks like Netflix, hulu, YouTube Red and AmazonPrime (those that you get outside of the traditional cable box model) are becoming the preferred means of entertainment for many consumers. This shift in behavior has dramatically impacted the advertising efforts of many brands who now struggle to find their audience as these new mediums circumvent traditional channels, turning traditional ads into an optional part of the viewing experience. To mitigate this trend, many brands have responded by shifting their advertising dollars to creating pre-roll content or serving up ads via social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, and SnapChat. In response to this perceived invasion, many young consumers—who dislike the pervasiveness of digital advertising—have implemented ad-blocking software. More progressive brands, however, are beginning to discover an alternate way of reaching an ad-weary audience when traditional means are diminished.

There is a quiet war happening in the fitness industry that very few people are aware of. Consumers are migrating away from larger, traditional health clubs and gyms that offer an “everything under one roof” experience in exchange for smaller specialty boutiques such as SoulCycle, CrossFit, and others. This trend appears to be driven by the accessibility of fitness offerings, along with consumers’ (especially millennials) desire to find a workout that meets their needs as both a physically challenging and socially satisfying experience.

Why do some brands seem to last centuries while others fall out of favor almost as soon as you hear of them?

Here are 3 things that will help you build a brand with staying power as a part of its DNA.

1. Build your brand around values, not things — Many brands reach their peak too quickly. These brands associate with a singular product or service, which eventually becomes a cultural blip that falls out of favor as quickly as it arrived. As important as it may be for a company to have a focused and singular vision in order to produce a great product or service operationally—this does not mean that a brand should follow that same model.Brands that are built around values rather than things are usually the ones that have the greatest staying power; because values unlike things, are both scalable and transferable. Apple is not about computers. They are about innovation.

Brick-and-mortar locations are no longer a necessity for building billion dollar brands in the digital economy. Uber, Airbnb, and many others have conquered the problem of building a brand without offering a physical location for customers to visit. Recently, delivery-only dining service Maple is revolutionizing what it means to build a prominent food service brand—without a retail storefront.

Over the past decade there has been a growing conversation nationally around the cost and effectiveness of care. The Accountable Care Act has infused the marketplace with more informed consumers, forcing payers to adjust their plan coverage to meet new requirements and serve this larger population of engaged plan participants. Simultaneously, healthcare providers have been exploring new means to better provide for patients; be it improvements in Electronic Medical Records or serving as an Accountable Care Organization (ACO)—by assuming a percentage of the financial risk associated with the care and outcomes of the services provided. But there is a new frontier in healthcare that is fast approaching: the consumer experience.